Alone
by Tarawyn
Summary: Remus, from when he found out about James and Lily's deaths, and Sirius' imprisonment, until the end of PoA. Not a fullout fic, although I might be doing one someday...*EDITED*


**A/N:** A Remus fic...basically a stand alone for now. Most is long, long, long before he knew Sirius was innocent. That should be taken as obvious. For a change, it isn't all thoughts...first half is, though.  
  
**Disclaimer:** If you heard of it, I have nothing to do with it. Besides the fact that I write about it. But that's past the point...  
  
**Alone**  
  
  
Alone.  
  
I'm not a stranger to being alone. A common asset to life, on my own part. I never particularly enjoyed it, but the tendancy is overwhelming at times. I'm afraid of myself, and I never was one to hide things. Lying was a skill that developed itself, though I didn't enjoy that either. Neccesity called. I never enjoyed it, and so I stayed solitary. Except in the case of three.  
  
Three that are no longer there.  
  
I should have known. It was something I was supposed to see, and even if I wasn't, it would have saved so much of the pain. Pain that I'm the only one left to go through.  
  
James. The first to accept, the first to understand, and the first to care. I never really understood you fully, and vice versa, but it never mattered. The things that mattered were always visible to both of us, even if they were invisible to the others. It hurt the most when you started to pull away. Pulling away on the advice of _him_.  
  
I'm not going to say his name. Never again, never again. He betrayed us, all of us. Two of us are dead because of you. Dead. They can't come back. But still...you couldn't. You couldn't have. I knew you, not as well as I could have, but I can't believe you would ever do something like this. But nothing says otherwise. It'll take me forever to accept it. It's impossible to believe one of us would really do something like this...  
  
And Peter. The proof of what happened, the proof. But there's something that doesn't fit. Sort of like a waterlogged puzzle. It should fit, it was made to fit, but it doesn't. You would have never done something like that, running out and sacrificing yourself. But desperate times call for desperate measures...who said that, again? Does it matter?   
  
So I'm the only one left. Alone again. It's how I've put myself to be. I didn't join a pack, and they'll never consider me fully human. I'm one of a kind and there's nothing to change that now. A werewolf that edges humanity.  
  
That's a laugh. A humane werewolf. Humane, that'd be a nice way to describe the one that bit me. Humane.   
  
My thoughts don't flow together anymore. I never was sarcastic. Sarcastic was too thinly parted from lying. I lied out of neccesity, and nothing more. I never want to do anything more than neccesity. Never again.  
  
I'm leaving. I don't want contact. Everything reopens the scars, both visible and invisible. Even going will only put it on hold. I can't stay hidden forever, but hiding away seems like my only logical choice... 

***

"One to Farmingdale, please."  
  
The man speaking, who could have hardly been 22, already had the beginnings of gray streaks in his hair. From the back, it might have appeared it was for style, but from front it was apparent that the streaks were natural. He was tired, or, to put it better, exhausted.  
  
The stallholder handed Remus his ticket, and he walked to the bench of the bustation. His few belongings were in an old bag, and from the outsiders eye, he was going away for a well-deserved break. The truth, however, was not quite as fanciful.  
  
The bus pulled up, and he stepped on. With a final look at what had been a sanctuary, he departed, for what should have been forever...  
  


***

  
  
"He did _what?_"  
  
An older Remus, and a once well-trusted friend, Albus Dumbledore, were in the small livingroom of an increasingly small house on the edge of the woods. The subject in question was that of Sirius Black.  
  
"Yes, he escaped. It's unbelievable, but quite true."  
  
Remus was frozen in his chair. Rushing through him were feelings...shock, anger, fear...and _relief_?  
  
_Remus, put yourself together. This man killed your friends. He __was_ your friend. He betrayed all of us...  
  
Despite his catching of bearings, the relief continued to flow. The doubt in his former friend's actions had been extinguished long ago. The lonliness had mixed into anger, and he accepted it, and pushed it away from himself. But there was relief...maybe it was because, through it all, he didn't want his old friend to be in Azkaban forever. He didn't really want _anyone_ to be subjected to that fate, with the possible exception of Lord Voldemort himself. But throughout his entire conversation, there was something he couldn't quite place...  
  


***

  
  
_My God._  
  
The map. _The map._ He had been looking at the map, letting thoughts fly, and then...  
  
_My God!_  
  
He was dead. _Dead._ _He_ had killed him, twelve years ago. But there he was...and the map didn't lie.  
  
_My god! What in the world is going _on?_ He's dead, dead...but he's there...and there's...Sirius?_  
  
He looked out the window, trying to find some sanity--and found himself in a deeper panic. There, going under a very familiar cloak, was _Harry._ At the current time, it didn't matter who was innocent and who was guilty. One of the people there, regardless of whichever, was after his blood. And besides, he wasn't about to trust himself to think. There was no time for potions, or anything of the sort; he had to hurry.  
  


***

  
  
Hogwarts...a place that had been a sanctuary for so long, and had once again been ripped away. The thoughts of the night before were hopelessly muddled, but there was one that stood out from them all--_Sirius was innocent_.  
  
Innocent. He should have known. _He should have known._ Instincts had kicked in, and he had ignored. Being half man and half wolf wasn't quite as bad as it seemed, as far as the instincts went, until you came across something obvious to the wolf and not quite to the man.  
  
But how much, he mused, did it really matter? His friend was innocent...and hadn't taken another's life...and how much, really, did it all matter? Being alone, for a second run, was over. 


End file.
